by Milnerton Players Amateur Dramatic Society

This relatively unknown Tennessee Williams play has a cast of four women. Two are aged 30+ and should be able to speak in a Southern American accent. The other two are closer to 40 and are required to have German accents. Set in the West End of St. Louis in the mid-thirties on a lovely Sunday for a picnic at Creve Coeur Lake, this delightful play, featuring four of Williams’ most engaging female characters, skillfully explores, with comic irony and great tenderness, the meaning of loneliness, the need for human connection, as well as the inevitable compromises one must make to get through “the long run of life.”Dorothea, is a deluded Blanche DuBois-like middle-aged civics teacher. Her slovenly but good-hearted, hard-of-hearing roommate, Bodey, unrelentingly urges Dottie to strike up a relationship with her portly, twin brother Buddy (who never is seen onstage). Helena is Dottie's upscale and haughty friend and colleague who wants Dottie to move into an apartment with her. SophieGluck, a German immigrant, manic-depressive, mourning the loss of her beloved mother, is another tenant in the building who adds to the chaos of a lovely Sunday morning. Reviewing it in the New York Post, Clive Barnes said, "This is not your usual Tennessee tourist trip" and added, "But it is sweet, honest, compassionate, different and totally enjoyable." The play will be staged end July, beginning August with rehearsals starting in the last week of May.For further info or extracts from the script, contact the director, Judith Herbig at 084 2799 557.